


you're fireproof (nothing breaks your heart)

by theviolonist



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-01
Updated: 2013-11-01
Packaged: 2017-12-31 02:59:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1026474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviolonist/pseuds/theviolonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts with a postcard. On the back four sharp words are written in blue ink: <i>Come, not before Sunday.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	you're fireproof (nothing breaks your heart)

There was one summer. They don't talk about it, because when you're a vampire the past better stay where it is, lest you dredge up a hundred years of rotten memories left to die in an old crate. It's been known to happen - and Elijah, who doesn't always keep track of the horrors he's done or avoided, sticks fast to the avoidance rule. Until Katerina, that is. Or, as she calls herself now, Katherine. But at the time she was still Katerina.

She was Katerina in Klaus's hands and she was Katerina for centuries after that, Katerina in the papers, disguised under someone else's features, Katerina in famous photographs, posing next to Amelia Earheart and Marilyn Monroe and Lady Di, transcending time and countries, as she does. Elijah made an effort not to watch - kept tabs, because at heart he's a librarian and he likes records, as long as they're not about himself, but didn't reach out to her. What would he have said? Sorry I didn't save you? Klaus would've laughed.  _Weak_ , he would've sniggered, as though he himself were much more than an overgrown man-child with a disproportioned ego - but Elijah's brother, forever and always.

So he doesn't talk to her. He doesn't send her letters, not even the ones he write in his head, where he sounds a little more composed than in person because she always takes his breath away, and that's when she's not holding a stake to his heart or a blade to his throat (she's grown wary, at last. He'd loved her before, too, when she naive and unsuspecting, but you've got to have claws to survive in this world, in addition to the fangs). He doesn't telephone her, doesn't show up at one of her premieres, doesn't lounge in a booth at a bar where she sings, doesn't spy for her in an office building milling with traders, where she's sharpening her business acumen on defenseless Wall Street sharks. He doesn't do any of that, and he's not worse for it, look, no bite marks, no bullet holes, he's almost unharmed except, of course, for his heart, but that was a lost cause anyway. 

At least until that summer. 

It starts with a postcard. It's a view of the Côte d'Azur, obscene in its simplicity, glimmering golden and blue. On the back four sharp words are written in blue ink: _Come, not before Sunday._ Elijah laughs to himself. Then he leaves a note for Klaus - oh, he'll be pissed - and catches the first plane, even though it's only Friday night. Damn her.

He arrives at seven the next day, a human hour, harassed by the sun, his ring weighty on his finger. In the back of his mind he wonders if she's so desperate to pass for human that she'll even expose herself to that torture, lay on the beach like the other punters and pretend to sunbathe. She takes some tracking to find, but eventually he picks up her traces - not very subtle: Chanel N°7 and a faint hint of blood - near Hotel Massena. When he looks up the building bears on him with all its weight, its balconies illuminated, gaudy and golden. Elijah chuckles to himself. 

He gets someone to lead him to the penthouse without even a second thought, and of course there she is when he opens the door, though she's got her teeth sunk into a poor girl's neck, the truly horrendous bathing suit tainted with blood. When she sees him her head snaps up, she frowns, sends the girl away with a flick of her wrist.

"What are you doing here?" she asks, wiping the blood off her mouth. "I said not before Sunday."

"Why hello, Katerina. I just couldn't wait to see you, I suppose."

It's an obvious trick, almost an insult to her intelligence, but from the corner of his eye he sees her face soften before she schools it back into its mask of iciness. If he had a heart, there's a possibility it would skip a beat in his chest right about now. 

"What if I had previous engagements?" She sighs. "Take a seat, then." She motions to the seat the girl was leaning against. It's still stained with bright red, the blood not yet dry. 

"Why did you contact me?"

Of course he's not asking the right questions - and usually he's so good at doing that, asking the hard questions, the ones that hurt: did you forgive me? You know I'm supposed to bring you back to Klaus? Who are you? Who are you, now? Who have you made yourself to be? Have you known all along, how stupidly I loved you? 

She shrugs. "I didn't feel like being lonely."

He casts an eye around the room, all the ostentatious splendor. "I can't imagine you'd be lonely," he says simply, not adding: rich, or beautiful, as you seem to have become.

"Well, you'd be wrong, then, wouldn't you? It seems to be a running theme, with us."

The way she says 'us' it's not a favor, but it's there, and she said it. Here, Elijah's always been good at that, too: puzzles. 

"What do you want, Katerina?"

And yes, yes, between the two of them it's like a board game, a deadly game of Monopoly: who will get where first, which part of the world will be conquered, which city, which continent... where will they dig their claws and not let go, who will draw blood, who will bite deep enough to carve their name into the bone. _What do you want, Katerina?_

And if you ask Katerina she comes from a long line of women, not witches, but sorceresses: she knows about soiled cloth, honor, sin, the winged hand of evil on your shoulder and the way it never quite lets go. When she was a child in Bulgaria there was no Snow White or Sleeping Beauty: one of her first bedtime stories was about the loss of innocence and was told by a parched grandmother, while her mother was in labor, busy tearing yet another daughter out of her belly, a child that didn't want to be of this world and would, eventually (another story), leave it. 

Yes - _what do you want, Katerina?_

And Katerina, with the blinds drawn, beautiful, but then she's always been beautiful, dangerous, lethal, "What do you think?"

He doesn't know, that's the thing. That's why he's asking. He doesn't say that, of course: he kisses her instead, and then pushes her onto the bed, or maybe she pushes him, they don't really know at this point.

And here it is, that's what you wanted to hear: they come out of it with bruises and tears, blood gushing from their mouths and their open wounds. It'll be like that for weeks, four exactly: more champagne ordered up, they'll take baths in it, that and blood and milk to honor that old hag Elizabeth Báthory, and they'll laugh, she'll stop looking over her shoulder for a short second while she unknots his tie and pushes him against an elevator door, and they'll drink from heiresses and media moguls, all the dignified trash that comes washing up the French shores, they'll discuss the century and how it's not that good but not that bad, either, there was better, they'll eat poached eggs and at night they'll go to all the most expensive restaurants, Elijah will ignore his brother, Katerina will ignore her previous engagements (which she had, he knows, though he doesn't ask), he'll roll up his trousers and she'll take off her diamonds, tuck them in his breastpocket, they'll advance in the cold night sea – once he'll suggest that they continue to walk forward until the moon dwarfs and the water swallows them up and Katerina will mock him, together in the afterlife? she'll say, that's such a laughable idea, look at us, we can't even manage to be together as vampires, I don't see why you think we'll fare better beyond the pearly gates, and then he'll say, Fair enough, but then why am I here? She won't know what to answer. He'll know better than to think he's had the last word, though, but she'll kiss him and melt into him and he'll know that she loves him as least half as much as he loves her.

(In the middle of it he'll ask, Can I drink your blood, and she'll say, Why, and he'll say, I want to keep it in a vial inside my chest, like an antidote, and she'll say, I'm here, and he'll say, Don't think me a fool, Katerina, and she'll let him. He'll drink from her like he's been thirsty for decades – maybe he has.)

"I love you," he says, but it seems inadequate after he's said it in so much more eloquent a language.

She looks at him from the other side of the room, her eyes dark. "You do," she says, almost wonderingly, and if there was ever a moment Elijah Mikaelson knew he was doomed, that might have been it.


End file.
